History on the move: Photographer of boxers and presidents

An extensive collection of local history moved Monday from the home of legendary city photographer Stanley A. Bauman to Stonehill College in Easton.

“He has left us a gift, a brilliant window on the past,” said Martin McGovern, the spokesman for Stonehill College. “It's our privilege and our honor at the college to have the responsibility to preserve that gift.”

More than 500,000 negatives taken by Bauman between 1938 and 2003 will now be housed in the Martin Institute at the college, McGovern said.

Bauman, who died in February at age 93, promised the collection to the college in the late 1990s.

He was Stonehill's official photographer for more than three decades and received the President's Medal from the college in 1997.

He began his career with The Enterprise in the 1930s.

Bauman's family members were present for the move Monday. Stonehill staff transported 675 shoe boxes filled with negatives that Bauman filed using an elaborate indexing system.

The collection will remain closed for up to two years so the staff may process and preserve the negatives, officials said. After that time, the collection will be open to the public for research.

The preservation process will include placing each negative in an envelope sleeve made of pH-neutral paper, then storing it in an archival quality buffered board box, officials said.